The University of Colorado political science professor who mined economic data to predict that Republican nominee Mitt Romney would win the presidential election with 330 electoral votes joked Wednesday that Boulder residents "can breathe more easily."

Professor Ken Bickers said that in non-battleground states, the state-by-state model he developed with his colleague Michael Berry from CU-Denver was pretty close -- only off by about 2 percentage points.

But the professors had forecast electoral wins for Romney in the battleground states of Colorado, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Iowa, Virginia and Ohio, all of which were claimed by President Barack Obama on Tuesday.

The model underestimated Obama by about 5 to 6 percentage points in the swing states.

"I'm sure Boulder is happy that our model turned out to be wrong," Bickers said. "They can breathe more easily."

Bickers credited the Obama campaign for overcoming the economic conditions to get the president re-elected, saying he made history as an incumbent who was able to rise above a weak economic recovery.

"The campaign was smart," Bickers said. "They made good decisions on how to run the campaign. And the Romney campaign was unable to offset those."

Nate Silver, who runs the New York Times-hosted FiveThirtyEight blog, has been heralded for accurately calling all 50 states in Tuesday's presidential election.

Earlier this election season, Silver used Twitter to debunk the CU professors' model, saying he saw "glaring problems with their methodology."

The professors' model predicted that Romney would win 330 of the total 538 Electoral College votes.

Bickers said Silver's job is to make predictions and that he and Berry had a more analytical model to understand state-by-state factors.

The model developed by Bickers and Berry is based on the Electoral College and, they say, it is the only one of its type to include more than one state-level measure of economic conditions.

When applied to past elections, the CU professors said their model accurately predicted results dating back to 1980.

To make their predictions, the professors combed economic data from all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The professors' model included state and national unemployment figures as well as changes in income.

Bickers said he's uncertain whether they'll modify their model -- and he'll make that call after he's gotten more sleep.

On Tuesday night, Bickers said, he woke up at 2 a.m. to watch the polls and then again at 4 a.m.

"Is that geeky? That's the sign of a political junkie, I guess."

Steve Fenberg, executive director of New Era Colorado, credits Obama's success in swing states to a couple of factors -- including engaging Latinos, other minorities, young people and women voters.

"He also had a really strong ground game," Fenberg said. "I think pundits sometimes brush that off. In the past, it was about who had more money to buy TV ads. I don't think anybody in this election thought there wasn't enough money being spent. It came down to the field efforts, and he invested in the right states, including Colorado."

Dan Gould, chairman of the Boulder County Democratic Party, said he was concerned about the study because it looked solely at economic data.

"We are complex people," he said. "We make decisions all the time that are not related to economics."

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